My friend Curtis C. Chen had a short sci-fi story published in Playboy Magazine a few years ago.
This came up recently when he and a few other writer friends were over, and I ran upstairs to grab my prized signed copy. The next morning, as I was tidying up from our gathering, I started paging through the magazine.
I’d read Curtis’s story back when it first came out, but I hadn’t…you know.
Spent a lot of time reading the other “articles.”
So I was rather surprised this morning to learn what all is between the pages of a Playboy.
- There were a handful personality profiles of male celebrities—the men Playboy men want to be.
- There was a fascinating (and quite thought-provoking) feminist essay on women’s rage and the male gaze in cinema.
- There were a ton of interesting mini-essays about the direction of our society (this was the “future issue”), mostly all with a tone that challenged the reader to step up as part of a positive futuristic society.
- There was a pornographic-yet-charming comic strip about why men need to gain enthusiastic consent for sex.
What struck me as I was reading through the articles—yes, the actual articles—was this: Playboy is nailing the narrative gap of need vs. desire.
They deeply understand what their readers desire (hotties, scantily clad), and also what their readers need (reassurance, confidence, inspiration, community, connection).
Would the average Playboy reader articulate to himself, “I’m buying this magazine because it gives me confidence and makes me feel connected to a community?” Probably not. But I guarantee that’s a big part of the reason they keep coming back for the hotties and the articles.
(Side note, when I went to buy this copy years ago, I pointed out to the cashier that I was getting it because my friend had a story published in it. “So you can tell people there’s a local author in this one,” I said. “In case you have trouble selling copies.”
The cashier looked at me for a long beat. “We don’t have any trouble selling Playboy,” he said. Fair.)
Here’s what most people get wrong about storytelling in business—they focus on painting a pretty picture of the outcome, the promised land, without understanding why their audience wants to go there in the first place.
What does your audience desire? And, more importantly, what do they need—even if they can’t articulate that to themselves?
Where does it hurt?
In marketing, this is your customer’s pain point. The exact problem they’re facing, the thing that keeps them up at night, and has them biting their nails during the day.
- They want to double their sales
- They want to learn to play the piano for their daughter’s wedding
- They want to communicate better with their partner
Those are all great outcomes. But when you put the lens of need/desire over that pain point, it helps you understand why those outcomes are so important to your audience.
- They need to find a way to support their family now that their spouse lost his job
- They need to show their daughter how much they care by performing at her wedding
- They need to save their marriage
The most magnetic stories—and the most effective marketing—don’t just highlight what someone accomplished. They reveal what someone felt.
Lisa Cron, author of Story Genius, puts it like this:
“Here’s the secret: As counterintuitive as it may seem, a story isn’t about what happens in the world. A story is about what happens in the mind of the protagonist—the person through whose eyes we’re experiencing those events.”
Your ideal customer is on their own journey. They’re struggling with a problem. They’re chasing a goal. They think they know what they need.
But, of course, what they want and what they need are rarely the same thing.
- They want a 6-figure launch. They need to believe their ideas are worthy of attention.
- They want to go viral on Instagram. They need to feel like they’re allowed to take up space.
- They want more clients. They need clarity about who they truly want to work with—and permission to say no to everyone else.
Like I said, most people can’t articulate their need without some deep searching.
But if you do that work on behalf of your audience, then tell a great story that highlights the narrative gap of need/desire? It’ll make your audience feel seen.
That gap between desire and need is magnetic. Because if your story only speaks to your audiences’ desires, it stays on the surface—but if you can illuminate their need, your story becomes more than an interesting tidbit. It becomes a mirror.
Ask yourself: “What does my audience think they want—and what do I know they actually need?”
If you can tell a story that bridges that gap, your message will hit a whole new level of resonance.
When desire drowns out need
There’s just one problem. What if your audience doesn’t know what their real need is?
This came up recently in a 1:1 story coaching call. The woman I was speaking with is a relationship coach, and she told me that she kept running up against a messaging problem.
Most of her clients seek her out because they wanted help finding a fulfilling relationship, or finding fulfillment in their current relationship. But what she ends up working with them on is healing their own anxious attachment style, so they can find fulfillment whether or not they’re in a relationship.
That’s why it can be so difficult to craft messaging around the need. Your audience doesn’t arrive at your doorstep ready to name it. They’re speaking in the language of desire. They want you to tell them that the thing they think will fix their lives is the thing you sell.
But your job as the storyteller is to bridge that gap—to gently guide them from what they want to what will actually help them.
Practically, that means sharing stories that highlight that struggle.
- Where in your own story did you realize that you are chasing a desire when you should have been addressing a need? How did that feel?
- What fundamental shifts did you make to start going after that new goal? What did that look like?
- What happened when you finally understood your own need vs your desire? How did that manifest in your life?
It also means giving your audience the benefit of the doubt.
My coaching client was worried because she felt she wasn’t sharing enough “how to get a boyfriend” content and instead was turning people away with her talk about how to be a more centered, self-fulfilled person. She also was shying away from telling her own story too much, since she was no longer with her partner.
But when I asked her what her most recent clients had said about why they sought her out specifically, she told me that they saw how centered she was as a single woman, and they wanted that for themselves.
“It sounds like you’re already attracting the people that want your kind of help,” I told her. People who knew finding themselves was the happily ever after, not finding a partner.
I saw the shift in her social media almost immediately after our call—she went from posting in a guarded way to being refreshingly honest about the shift in her business, her own struggles, and how what you seek isn’t always what you need.
And that story is absolutely magnetic.